Managing Financial Document Templates

Documentation templates for subscriptions, invoices and statements can all be managed via the Document Templates icon available from the Process screen.

On opening the templates area, you are presented with a list of documents for all types of subscription correspondence for each category of subscriptions, along with the generic invoice, event registration invoice, and resource booking invoice formats.

On this form, the following actions are available for each document:

• A - The Uses Default setting - when checked - indicates that the document in question uses the format defined by the default document for that type.  For example, an invoice template for a subscription category called "Pledges" will use the "Subscription Default" invoice document template unless a specific format has been defined for the pledge invoice type.  This checkbox has no meaning when displayed for non-subscription document types.
   
• B - The Edit option will open the document template editor for that document. After pressing the edit button, you may be presented with a dialog message warning about missing tables.  You may safely ignore this message and continue to open the template.
   
• C - The Revert button will delete a subscription template and revert back to the default template for the subscription document type.  This button has no effect when used for non-subscription documents.

Editing a Document Template

When opening a document template for editing, Gnosis will display a design canvas for the document:

Design Template Component Parts

The area that is shown above as bounded by the red square is the canvas area is where the visual design is created.  In this area, you can drag in text, picture and other objects from the Toolbar to create elements in the design.  Text elements may be double-clicked to edit the text content, and single-click on any object to change the properties of the object (color, size, border, etc) using the properties palette.

The toolbar contains objects that can hold text, images, and other design elements.  To add any of the items in the toolbar to your canvas, click on the desired item and drag it onto the canvas area.

The field list contains a list of the Gnosis data fields that are available to place in the template document.  Click on the fields tab to view the fields list and drag a field onto the canvas or onto a text element already on the canvas.

The properties panel presents an area where the design attributes can be changed for the element currently selected on the canvas.  Color, background color, borders, font, and other design elements can be changed here.

At any point in the process, you may preview our design with some actual data from your Gnosis system by clicking on the "Preview" button.  Change back to design mode by clicking on the "Designer" button.

Finishing and Saving the Document

When you have completed editing the document, you can close the designer window and then respond "Yes" in the prompt to upload the new document.

Once the new template is saved, there may be a delay before the new template is available on the server to be used for server-generated documents, however, if you generate a document on your computer, the new design will be used immediately.